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SAP Solution Brief SAP BusinessObjects Portfolio SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Suite

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SAP BusinessObjects BUSINESS INTELLIgENCE 4.0 SUITE

This new release retains the scalability of its predecessors from small, Main BI Innovations nimble, departmental deployments up to the global deployments required by SAP delivers on its vision of providing FORTUNE 500 companies. It also lays user autonomy by exposing data in the foundation for faster, modular plain business terms with a new and deployment, reducing deployment and significantly enhanced semantic layer maintenance costs by including all sorts (universe). In this release, the semantic of automations and tools that make the layer supports SAP BusinessObjects BI BI deployment almost invisible to IT solutions across all data types, including departments. Even more important, it true multidimensional sources, while reduces total cost of ownership by reusing existing hierarchies, key figures, supporting modern 64-bit architectures and metadata. With the new semantic and virtualization environments. layer, users can also take advantage of universes based on two or more sources SAP BusinessObjects Analysis and get relevant perspectives never possible before. With SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, users enjoy a highly visual look and feel A major theme across our entire BI suite that lets them run advanced multidimenis the unified user experience. Significant sional analyses following intuitive dragtime and effort have been spent on mak- and-drop steps. Business analysts are ing the look and feel of the user interface freed from reliance on IT or power users, similar among our BI solutions. This eases encouraging broad adoption of BI for the transition from one BI solution to more effective decision making across another, enabling a more productive the organization. The software is experience with less time spent navigat- designed to minimize implementation ing menus. Across the BI suite, users will effort and facilitate user adoption by discover a new and very sophisticated working with existing content. This charting experience. We have taken the includes cubes developed for the SAP great charting functionality of the SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse BusinessObjects Explorer software component and queries developed with and extended it (with many more graphic SAP Business Explorer (SAP BEx) tools. That means all your investments choices) to SAP BusinessObjects Analysis and SAP BusinessObjects Web in cube and query design are safe, and users transitioning from SAP BEx to Intelligence software. Finally, the new SAP BusinessObjects Analysis can release introduces additional interoperability workflows among our new online keep working with familiar assets. analytical processing (OLAP) edition for

The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) 4.0 suite is the next major release of our BI suite. This document provides a high-level view of the softwares new functionality.

SAP BusinessObjects Analysis, SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, and SAP Crystal Reports software.

The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.0 suite redefines the way enterprises achieve remarkable results by allowing selfservice access to relevant information. It helps business users transform their decision making by providing fact-based, quality information regardless of where the data resides.

SAP BusinessObjects Analysis comes in two editions. The edition for Microsoft Office provides analysts with intuitive analytical functionality within their familiar Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint environments. Its light footprint fits without disruption into an existing SAP software landscape. This can minimize the effort and risk associated with introducing new approaches to BI while enabling a smooth transition from SAP BEx tools to SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions. The OLAP edition provides self-service analysis workspaces for personal or shared use over the Web. Both editions help users quickly uncover business insights and share them beyond the confines of a single department or group.

of our dashboard builder product, it is designed to centralize and unify the information that people use in their daily activities. The BI workspace displays content from not only SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions but also other content types such as external Web pages, Microsoft Office documents, and Adobe PDF documents. In this release, the BI platform offers new alerting functions, enabling faster response to changing business conditions. Three tools may be used for alert creation: SAP Crystal Reports, SAP BusinessObjects Event Insight software, and the central management console. Alert subscriptions are centrally managed, and alert notifications can be sent via e-mail or to the BI launch pad. For improving activity, compliance, system performance, and usage analysis as well as monitoring the different BI suite components, this release includes new monitoring and auditing functionality. A new monitoring dashboard provides insight into the health and performance of the entire BI landscape and may trigger notifications when thresholds are met. Monitoring of the BI platform and root cause analysis can also be performed via the SAP Solution Manager application management solution. A completely overhauled auditing function for compliance and usage analysis is available to gain visibility on how users use the existing BI deployment. Finally, customers already using the change and transport system tool for application lifecycle can now use this for BI content lifecycle management across different landscapes.

SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards


SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards software, formerly known as SAP BusinessObjects Xcelsius Enterprise, gets significant enhancements in two main areas: authoring experience and enterprise readiness. By natively supporting the new semantic layer, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards shares a common interface for all data source access and offers an improved and integrated query design experience. For the first time, authors can design dashboards and supporting queries without having to leaving their authoring environment. A simplified design experience also eliminates Microsoft Excel work required in previous releases. For large-enterprise deployments of dashboards, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards takes advantage of new dedicated processing and cache services. Because these new services reside on the BI platform, additional infrastructure investments are not required. Finally, for large global deployments, dashboards can be served to users in multiple regions using local languages, eliminating the need to maintain multiple versions of the same document.

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform


In this release, the SAP BusinessObjects BI platform retains the scalability of its predecessors but provides a fresh take on self-service BI with the BI launch pad and personalized information consumption with the BI workspace. The BI launch pad is a new self-service BI portal and an important part of any strategy to provide access to and deliver relevant information. It offers a more intuitive look and feel than its predecessor, InfoView. The BI launch pad allows users to work on multiple documents at the same time and offers improved search functionality for finding relevant information. The BI workspace is a new browserbased application that is part of the SAP BusinessObjects BI platform. It offers users a richer, easier-to-use experience for finding, organizing, and working with BI content. An evolution

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer


All innovations to the end-user experience recently brought to SAP BusinessObjects Explorer 3.2 are now directly available from the new BI launch pad. These enhancements combine with a unified search experience to make data exploration accessible to a broader user population.

SAP BusinessObjects Mobile


SAP BusinessObjects Mobile software now offers the same sophisticated charting experience found in the rest of our BI suite, so mobile users can access key performance indicators and visualizations anywhere they are. The software enhances users ability to take action (call, e-mail, or text) and be more productive common actions such as sending documents are only one click away. And with its enhanced support of mobile devices and technologies (such as WiFi) and simplified configuration, SAP BusinessObjects Mobile software is even easier to deploy across the enterprise.

Business analysts and report authors also get a common design experience across all data sources with a standardized query panel across the BI suite. This new query panel integrates hierarchies and makes it easier to use multidimensional sources in analyses and reports. Reusing existing content is always a good authoring practice that reduces time and effort, and in this release, authors can reuse report elements such as charts, tables, and queries across documents. Finally, support of dimensional controls is extended to the consumption experience where hierarchies can be expanded or collapsed.

SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence


Three areas have been tremendously improved in the new release of SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence: user experience and interactivity, data navigation, and interoperability. The software features a modern user interface where toolbars are organized by functionality and frequently used functions are only one click away for better, more natural workflows. Business users and analysts will also benefit from a new charting experience (including many new charts), without losing the fine-grained chart control they are used to. The new release delivers better data navigation by allowing on-the-fly browsing of data providers, objects, and data. Quick result validation, combined with new sorting and filtering functions, helps analysts and advanced users understand the data behind reports and analyses.

SAP Crystal Reports


In this new release, SAP Crystal Reports has undergone several productivity improvements: a new designer interface, support for our new semantic layer across all data sources, and multilingual support. Report designers can experience a new user interface that includes new styling with ribbonbar look and feel, a new query design panel, and more efficient workflows, all delivering a superior report authoring experience. By leveraging the new semantic layer, SAP Crystal Reports enables an easier, more consistent query design experience across all data sources, because it is based on the same metadata model used by SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions. By supporting our new semantic layer, SAP Crystal Reports enables broader reuse of existing hierarchies, key figures, and metadata.

Achieve remarkable results by maximizing business performance with effective use of information, and enable the best performance from all employees, executives, partners, and your entire business network.
SAP Crystal Reports now offers global reach with multilingual support. In the new release, text objects, report prompts, tool tips, and so forth can be translated and localized. Report authors can create one report and schedule it in multiple languages to different users in multiple regions, thus reducing report deployment costs and enabling a greater number of people to access and share trusted information.

To Learn More
To learn how the new SAP BusinessObjects BI suite can help your organization, contact your SAP representative or visit www.sap.com/sapbusinessobjects.

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Summary With the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) 4.0 suite, you and your business network gain insight into business operations at every level of your organization. Empower all individuals to transform their decision making by creating and assembling decision-ready information and by accelerating collaborative decisions with the right people, tools, and standards. Achieve remarkable results by maximizing business performance with effective use of information, enabling the best performance from all employees, executives, partners, and your entire business network. Business Challenges Increase the percentage of employees that actively use information for decisions in their daily business processes Increase the number of business processes that are effectively measured and tracked using BI Increase performance of strategic business processes Minimize reliance on IT intervention for all your information needs Speed up decision making to eliminate missed opportunities, lost revenues, and cost escalation Key Features Unified information access Make use of all your information assets regardless of format or location Comprehensive BI suite Meet the BI needs of all your business users and decision makers Intuitive, self-service user experience Increase user adoption and satisfaction Single, flexible platform Simplify deployment to more users across your organization Business Benefits Faster user adoption of BI solutions across lines of business Increased user ability to access and analyze data without ITs involvement Greater visibility of and accountability for key performance indicators by line of business Faster speed in making decisions collaboratively Higher number of performance metrics tracked over time For More Information To learn more about the SAP BusinessObjects BI suite, visit our Web site at www.sap.com/sapbusinessobjects.

50 103 203 (11/01) 2011 SAP Ag. All rights reserved. SAP, R/3, SAP NetWeaver, Duet, PartnerEdge, ByDesign, SAP BusinessObjects Explorer, StreamWork, and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP Ag in germany and other countries. Business Objects and the Business Objects logo, BusinessObjects, Crystal Reports, Crystal Decisions, Web Intelligence, Xcelsius, and other Business Objects products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects Software Ltd. Business Objects is an SAP company. Sybase and Adaptive Server, iAnywhere, Sybase 365, SQL Anywhere, and other Sybase products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sybase, Inc. Sybase is an SAP company. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. Data contained in this document serves informational purposes only. National product specifications may vary. These materials are subject to change without notice. These materials are provided by SAP Ag and its affiliated companies (SAP group) for informational purposes only, without representation or warranty of any kind, and SAP group shall not be liable for errors or omissions with respect to the materials. The only warranties for SAP group products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services, if any. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty.

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